Flower Park/Not-Park

I went up to Northern Kyoto yesterday and was somewhat surprised to find out that it's less than half an hour away by bike. I visited the park I talked about in the day before yesterday's post, but it turns out it's not so much a park as... A 50'x30' dirt field with flowering plants on three sides and a bench on the fourth. There's a also a large fenced off building. I'dve gone in, but it was locked, so presumably I'm not supposed to go in.

[Left: A rock.
Right: A leaf.]

I imagine this place is beautiful in the spring and summer. It should look fairly pretty once fall comes, as well. Many of the trees and plants have wooden labels attached to them, written in kanji with yomigana (how to read the kanji).


It's nearly fall, of course, but there were still some flowers in bloom, like you can see on both sides of this paragraph. There was also a shrine of some kind, but I'm not sure what it was dedicated to. There were flowers and maybe a glass of water, which leads me to believe it's similar to the shrines that you find all over town. I think there are are a few hundred scattered around Kyoto. I'm not certain why I didn't take a picture of it... It has some nice carving done on it, so maybe I'll grab a shot later and at it here.

They have an interesting choice of lights that I don't really understand the reason for. I mean, it appears to be a normal socket that's completely exposed to the elements and simply protected from physical shock by the cage around it. Seems as though you would go through a lot of bulbs or power due to shortages and random water, but I have to assume they don't. Either way, it looks pretty cool.

They seem to really not want you to bring bikes in, as there's this freaky fence thing at the entrance, and a sign saying not to bring bikes into the park. It also warns against playing ball games, especially baseball, in the park. Please see the picture at right for further details.

These last two were just me playing around with my camera and flash. I couldn't tell whether the bug-thing (left) was alive or if it was just the molted skin, but I didn't know what it was, so I stayed a few feet away.
You can see a little of the shrine in the background as that out-of-focus speckled gray splotch.

And, yay, flash.